Sometimes, life can throw you a curveball that changes everything about your best laid plans. For AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, that winding arm cannon fire came from Kevin Feige, when the Marvel Studios head mic-dropped two words to the dynamic duo. "Civil War."
Recently on Kevin Smith's Fat Man on Batman podcast, Markus and McFeely chatted with Smith and his co-host Marc Bernardin about their original plans for a third CAPTAIN AMERICA film, and how the Civil War storyline directive came from on high.
"We had a model for the Zola plot," Markus informed both Smith and Bernardin. In short, he told the pair that he and McFeely were hard at work on a completely different idea before Feige arrived on the scene with a "Hey fellas, we've decided to our version of the Civil War storyline. Yeah, so um, thumbs up, soldier!" Feige didn't actually use those words, but that was the idea.
"Yeah, the Bucky plot. So we were working on that for a long time before Civil War. Again, that's the other Kevin Bomb. He just goes, "Civil War."
"So the room goes quiet," Markus continued, "and Joe Russo just goes, 'Oh, he just gave us a billion dollar movie. Holy crap.'"
As the podcast conversation continued, Markus and McFeely explained how Feige was a big fan of dropping "Kevin Bombs" on unsuspecting staff members. To hear them talk about it, one gets the impression that Feige must have often felt like a "Good Fortune Fairy," sprinkling good news and career altering opportunities onto people's laps.
"It also helped the time he came into the room, and we were way down the road [working on Civil War], and he said, 'You might have to change one thing, because' and then he went-" It's at this point where Markus made the iconic Spider-Man web-shooting hand gesture, referring to the time when it was revealed that the wall-crawler would be joining the MCU.
"This is the best pain-in-the-ass I've ever had," Markus jovially admitted.
While that certainly is an entertaining bit of behind-the-scenes history at Marvel, inquiring minds want to know: What was the original plan for a third Captain America solo venture?
"He [Captain America] would recruit somebody else, he probably recruits Ant-Man, I think would be the other idea," the scribe explained. "We had a section where you could recruit somebody….I believe he was watching his daughter play soccer, it wasn't very good."
Yeah, I think we can all be thankful of the fateful "Kevin Bomb" that changed the trajectory of Captain Amrerica's solo film future. After all, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR serves as a fantastic "fork in the road" feature, and helped set up much the future of the MCU. Plus, the Tony versus Steve blockbuster landed us Tom Holland's Peter Parker, which for my money has been one of the best on-screen representations of Spider-Man ever.
If you'd like to hear more from the interview, click here to listen to the Fatman on Batman podcast.